BlackBerry Sues Facebook For Patent Infringement

Once considered to be one of the biggest mobile makers in the world, BlackBerry has gone through its fair share of dip. Ever since the rise of iOS and Android OS platforms, BlackBerry and its popularity has been on a decline. The BlackBerry Messenger used to be one of the most popular messaging services and has since been replaced by the likes of WhatsApp. However, it appears that BlackBerry feels undone by Facebook as it has sued the social networking company for patent infringement.

In a Los Angeles Federal Court, BlackBerry, Ltd. filed a lawsuit against Facebook, Inc. for infringing a patent on its messaging technology. The lawsuit focuses on Facebook Messenger and Facebook-owned properties like WhatsApp, Instagram. BlackBerry claims that for several years, it has attempted to have a dialogue with Facebook over the infringed patents.

Facebook Messenger

A few things that have been noted in the lawsuit include showing an unread message indicator on top of an icon. Something that WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger introduced a while ago. Here are a few other features noted in the lawsuit:

Showing multiple incoming messages in the inbox

Not showing timestamps of every message in a thread

Selecting a Photo Tag

The lawsuit appears to be related to BBM, once highly popular and now, obsolete. Using BBM, users could send unlimited messages to each other, a lot like iMessage. However, as the popularity of Blackberry devices dwindled, the company made the messaging service available for iOS and Android.

Considering companies like Apple, Google have similar messaging apps, it is surprising that they weren’t in the firing line as well. Facebook, on the other hand, has come out with a harsh response to the lawsuit:

BlackBerry’s suit sadly reflects the current state of its messaging business. Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, BlackBerry is now looking to tax the innovation of others. We intend to fight.

Conclusion

If past lawsuits are anything to go by, this legal battle will be on for a while.